Elon Musk’s xAI is expanding its global AI infrastructure footprint in a major way. According to a new report from Bloomberg, the company is partnering with Saudi Arabia’s state-backed AI venture Humain to build a massive 500 megawatt data center in the kingdom, powered by Nvidia chips.
Musk announced the project during a US–Saudi investment forum in Washington on Wednesday, sharing the stage with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang ahead of scheduled remarks from U.S. President Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Musk joked onstage that the deal was for “500 gigawatts” before correcting himself, underscoring the sheer scale of what xAI is preparing to build.
The announcement comes as xAI continues an aggressive push to scale up its AI capabilities after Musk’s public falling out with OpenAI, which he helped create. The company has been racing against OpenAI and Anthropic to develop next-generation models and secure the enormous amount of computational power required to train them.
While Humain is working with Nvidia and other chipmakers, Saudi Arabia does not yet have U.S. approval to purchase the most advanced semiconductors. Bloomberg noted that the Trump administration is preparing to greenlight those sales soon, which would significantly accelerate the development of the new data center.
The timing of the Saudi announcement is notable, arriving as xAI continues ramping up construction of its Colossus II supercomputer cluster in Memphis, Tennessee. That site is now receiving shipments of the $375 million worth of Tesla Megapacks that will power the facility as it comes online. The company purchased the one-million-square-foot property earlier this year as part of its plan to build out one of the world’s largest AI compute hubs.
With simultaneous mega-projects underway in the U.S. and now Saudi Arabia, xAI is positioning itself as one of the most ambitious players in global AI infrastructure — and Musk shows no signs of slowing down.
